Working Against Type: Revealing the dynamic body in word-based visual art
Supervisors: Prof. David Ferry,
Dr. Clive Cazeaux Research group: Centre for Fine Art Research
My Fine Arts PhD aims to reveal indices of the dynamic body within
text-based artwork, proposing that these traces can provide new
understandings of artistic practice involving text, and alternate ways
of engaging with the works. While handwriting is immediately connected
with gestures of the inscriber—since cursive is associated with
movements of fingers, hand and arm—printed letters and typographical
characters are not readily recognised as traces of an active body.
Many current artists employing text and typography, however, are
engaged in studio practice that intentionally evidences their physical
efforts in making the words; in doing so, the artworks propose to awaken
imagined or recognised movements in the viewer (Noë, Sheets-Johnstone,
Olivier & Gapenne), triggering a reception beyond conventional
signification. This qualitative inquiry highlights a select group of
contemporary word-based artists in the United Kingdom and
Canada—including my own practice—that consider the ways in which text
might be embodied through both its creation, and in its viewing.
